


Through the Ice

by runningsissors



Category: Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Book: New Moon, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-10-15 05:17:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17522621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runningsissors/pseuds/runningsissors
Summary: She’s a renaissance, a re-emergence of herself, of the girl she used to know when she looked in the mirror.





	Through the Ice

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to livejournal in 2011. Rediscovered as I was cleaning out my dropbox.

She pushes a few fries around on her plate as she stares at her lunch.

The sound of laughter, rowdy and loud is like a hum in her ear. It shifts and blends, swirls around her till she can no longer hear it. She takes another look at her burger going cold on her plate and grimaces. She can barely keep herself together, let alone keep her lunch down at this point.

This isn’t right. It just can’t be.

She takes a small peek over her shoulder, just long enough to catch the blur of their outlines and then shoots her eyes back down to her lap.

_It’ll be like I never existed_

Her breath gets caught in her lungs. It hurts. It’s so much. When she closes her eyes, she can still see _his_ gaze on her that first day. Can still feel way her heart had pounded in her chest so hard. 

But he’s not there now, not sat across the room from her with his eyes piercing into the back of her head. None of them are. Now their table is occupied by a gang of freshmen throwing spoonfuls of peas at one another.

She wants to storm over, yell at them, do anything. _Don’t you know this table’s already taken? It’s always taken. You can’t sit here! Now move before they think no one cares they’re gone. If they see their table is gone, they’ll never come back, so you have to mo-_

“Freshmen,” Angela says, rolling her eyes and taking the seat across from her, “they just seem to be more immature with every year.” 

Her smile falters, her brows slipping together. “Hey,” she says softly, “are you okay, Bella? You look pale.”

Bella gives a fast twitch of her lips, “I’m always really pale.”

Angela smiles at this. “Yeah,” she chuckles, “I suppose you’re right.”

 

 

 

+

 

 

 

She used to think about it; about pushing Edward into her mattress on warm summer nights and skimming her lips along the column of his neck. She used to crank the water as cold as it could get and just stand there, imagining what it would feel like to have his skin completely one with hers. 

It was only natural. Bella was seventeen and in love.

He left her with nothing. Everything was his, and now he’s gone.

The water’s lukewarm now. Too painful to remember; too frightened to forget.

She’d trade a thousand yesterdays just to see his crooked smile on last time. It’s fading from her mind, and all she sees is his hard eyes now when she sees him at all. Her visions never smile at her, never make her feel warm and loved. 

They scold her, treat her like a child.

They make her hate what she’s let herself become.

They’re not Edward. They just look like him. 

 

 

 

+

 

 

 

She discovers it accidentally. The slip of her sock covered foot against the clean linoleum as she reaches for a can of diced tomatoes, and the rush of sensation that floods her body as her pelvic bone makes contact with the corner of the counter.

A small gasp escapes her mouth as something deep within her twitches; stirs from a thousand-year sleep.  

She shouldn’t be allowed to feel this. Feel this ache from within her and the pressure that soothes. But she does, and it scares her.

She sucks in a quick breath, her grip on the can tightening as she pushes up on her toes and presses down with a little more force. 

Her eyes flutter shut for a just a moment, and she takes in the idea of feeling something other than that gut-wrenching pain she wakes with each morning.

She’s not entirely naive about these things. She understands.

She knows what she’s doing; knows precisely _why_ she’s feeling the things she does.

 

 

 

+

 

 

 

“What are we watching?” Jacob doesn’t knock now when he knows she’s home alone, just ploughs in and makes himself at home.

“ _Emma_ ,” she mumbles, moving her legs to give him room on the couch. He pulls them back and lays them on his lap.

He smiles like he’s interested (even though she knows he has no idea what it is) and starts running his hand up and down her leg softly.  “Sounds like a chick flick to me.”

“It, uh, is. Period romance. No explosions.”

His hand burns a trail through her jeans as it slowly, unconsciously, goes higher and higher with each soft stroke.  Her body tingles like it’s gone to pins and needles, her stomach’s in tight knots she realizes.

This is Jacob. He shouldn’t be making her feel this way. He’s her friend, her only real friend.

This is wrong, so very wrong. But Jacob's hand is the corner of her kitchen counter, and she can’t seem to stop herself.  She wants too much; feels too many things all the time, and it’s so nice to have a single sensation overpower everything and drown them out.

She shifts a little lower, her feet now touching the other armrest, and sucks in a breath when his fingers lightly brush the inside of her thigh before sliding back down to her ankle.  

He’s touching her, and beyond all her comprehension she likes it. She doesn’t want him to stop. She wants his hand to slide closer to her, closer to where everything matters and boundaries get crossed indefinitely.

She throws a quick look at him, her cheeks flushed and embarrassed. He’s concentrated on the screen; his jaw clenched tight as the smooth skin pulls around the bone. He’s not a boy, she realizes. He’s a man.

“Is that the dude from Josie and the Pussycats?” he asks, a gentle laugh in his voice as he smiles in amusement at her.

She bites down hard on her cheek, tastes blood, and gives a weak smile.

“Yeah,” she mumbles breathlessly, “I, uh, I think it is. But he’s Mr. Elton in this though.”

When her thought has returned, she smiles, nudging him with her leg. “How have you seen Josie and the Pussycats?”

“I have two sisters, in case you forgot. Two sisters that monopolized all the VCR time.”

She rolls her eyes, but then he smiles at her again, so open and light with the late afternoon sun just shadowing the bridge of his nose, and she swears it’s the closest thing to actual perfection she’s seen in months. 

 

 

 

+

 

 

 

She doesn’t really know when it happens, just that it hits her like a crashing wave and pulls her under with it.

Her showers are hot. The water scalds her body, leaving it red as she wraps a towel around herself. She doesn’t want to think about why this shift has happened.

Maybe it was that day on the couch, or maybe it had been before that, and she was just too afraid to acknowledge it. Too scared of what it would mean. She’s not ready to hand him the mutilated leftovers of her heart and soul, and she knows it’s wrong, but she can’t help it.

The mist has cleared, and now all she can see is how wrong it was for her to wish Jacob was her brother. He’s lean muscles and big hands, and suddenly that’s all that consumes her.

Her world was black and white, but slowly she can see the colour creeping back. The grey sky is turning blue again. Her truck is red, her eyes are brown, and the trees are green; so many shades of green she couldn’t possibly count them all.

She’s a renaissance, a re-emergence of herself, of the girl she used to know when she looked in the mirror.  

 

 

 

+

 

 

 

They’re in his room (which in her opinion is a dangerous place to be, but she won’t say anything to Jacob) and she’s sitting on his bed while he hunts for a new t-shirt off the floor.

“I know I have a clean one here somewhere,” he grumbles under his breath as he throws more clothes over his shoulder.

“What was wrong with your last one?” she says, rubbing her feet along the carpeted floor. “It’s a movie, Jake. No one will judge you on your clothes.”

“Clothes make me sweat,” he replies. “I can barely handle my body heat without anything on as it is.”

She blushes, too many images and feelings hitting her at once.

He cries out in triumph a few moments later, a heathered grey cotton shirt held above his head. “I knew I’d find it!”

He pulls the shirt he already has on over his head and throws it to the ground. His chest, and shoulders and abs form a solid and precise picture of maleness that seems to render her ability to think sensibly these days. 

Jacob turns to grab the clean shirt, and his back curves, and the muscles fan away from his shoulder blades and the waistband of his tattered cargo pants sit low on his hips. He turns back and smiles at her quickly before bunching the neck of the shirt to fit around his head. 

His smile is nice, too.

She knows Ed- _he’ll_ always be there, drilling into her thoughts. She knows she can’t give Jacob what he wants; what he deserves more than anything in the world. It’s just that, well, the definition all the way down, quads, calves, ankles, well it kills her. She’d never been the kind of girl that was impressed with muscles, but, well, with Jacob it’s different.

Everything pulls, strains, fans underneath his skin like it’s nothing at all.

She may not love him as he loves her, but she loves him as much she’ll ever be able to love another person. And maybe it’s horrible that she’s willing to do this even though, but she doesn’t want to be alone anymore.

She wants someone to hold her together again.

 

 

+

 

 

 

Jacob drives her home.

They’d gone to Quil’s to watch movies that night. The four of them huddled around the television as the three boys freely added in their own dialogue and commentary.

She treasures these nights. The ones where her sides hurt from laughter and cheeks ache with the smiles she can’t contain.

But tonight had been different. Tonight, Bella had curled into Jacob’s side for warmth, rubbed her foot gently along his calf, brushed her hand across his stomach, and for the briefest moment had seen something she’s sure he hadn’t wanted her to notice. He’d shifted under her gaze; all tight grinned and sheepish eyes.  

“Well, I’d call that a successful night,” he says now, hands sliding along the plastic of her steering wheel. She watches them in fascination, the skin of his knuckles whitening as he tightens and loosens his grip.

“Yeah, it was,” she replies slowly. “Thanks for inviting me.”

He smiles, “hey, you’re one of us now. You being there was a given. Quil said that next time we would even let you pick, as long...”

Her eyes are watching his mouth now, how they form his words and the way his tongue wets his lips. She thinks of his hands slowing sliding up her leg that afternoon in her house and the tightening of her stomach.

She thinks of all the things she shouldn’t before she leans in and softly presses her lips against his.

When she pulls back, his eyes are wide. It’s quiet for a moment, with nothing but the sound of him breathing and the rapid pounding of her heart. He smiles, she blushes and then his hand is reaching out to rest on the back of her neck as he pulls her back to him. 

It’s more now. More tongues, more hands, more teeth, more heat that swallows Bella up. She should be holding back, not pushing Jacob too far, but then he pulls at her lip with his teeth, and she remembers that he doesn’t lust after what flows through her veins.

Her body follows his when he moves back, and her knees pin him to the bench. She feels him now. Feels him the way she’s thought about since her leg had brushed against him in the dark and he’d squirmed away in embarrassment.

Her hips push down against him, the way everything in her body is telling her to do, and she feels him choke out a gasp against her lips. His hands are sliding everywhere, unable to make up their mind on where they want to be. They’re on her hips, her thighs, her back, her face before he’s cradling the back of her head with one hand, while the other runs up her spine. 

Her hand is sliding lower and lower, and the inside of her is twisting tighter and tighter. And as her hand slips below the band of his unbuttoned jeans, and his head falls back against the neck rest, she knows she’s made the right decision.


End file.
